I was happy once - when sadness loomed
Over gangly shoulders and looked
With its bare black eyes upon the world
Upon which I looked, I laughed pale-toothed
And gaunt, and startled its wings that clothed
My pretty green arms and made me lean
into the silly embrace

Sweet, ghastly vehicles churned
Before childish eyes, my childish eyes, and
All night long I watched the city chase its tail
Do you understand? There is a gloom
To trap the soul. The laughter but boiled
Oozed out like ants from a bottle of sweet -
Canvas-skinned, like torn milk it was, and
I chased it like a babe before a bee,
Then like a babe I feared its pretty pinpricks
There is a beast in fear that touches
The young

The gape of a cold cold crown that makes
Even the crescent ugly - of rains run stale
Through the ages of dance, of wheat fields’
Jolly feathers and the merrymaking
Of the nights when warm things creeped
Nearer and said things so gentle, they lead
Through paths of grey caress toward
The golden sun

There is a gloom to eat the sky
A joy that mumbles like dry thunder, that wobbles
Like ripe clouds through the winds, swept off
From the heights…

Sweet, the night lifted her head and nodded, and
Sweet, all good things drooped like prayers
before stone - sweet, the crescents,
Of indent and star, where holy terror
Had loved us slow, never felt so small as did
In the leaning - the yielding - us, beautiful:
Bone-eyed and bare, shuffled off from the heights
Of silver youth, as ****** birds, as ****** boys
Through the winds, and we melted
Sifted, out of ourselves and into the honeyed
Embrace of old